SAN FRANCISCO, September 6, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The CEO of StemExpress essentially admitted in court Thursday that her biotech company supplies beating fetal hearts and intact fetal heads to medical researchers.

She also admitted at the preliminary hearing of David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress that the baby’s head could be procured attached to the baby’s body or “could be torn away.”

“That is an especially gruesome admission, but it begs the question: how did they get these fully intact human children?” says Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, which is representing Daleiden at the hearing.

“If you have a fetus with an intact head and an intact body, and intact extremities, that is something that would indicate that child was born alive, and then had their organs cut out of them, or that that child was the victim of an illegal partial-birth abortion,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Both of these are gruesome and violent acts.”

CMP’s Daleiden and Merritt are charged with 15 felony counts of illegal taping of confidential information in connection with undercover videos they released in 2015 after a three-year covert investigation into the buying and selling of baby body parts, which is a felony.

The covertly recorded videos exposed StemExpress as the go-to in California for Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in baby body parts, and the biotech company cut its ties with Planned Parenthood shortly after these were released.

CMP’s legal team is arguing in the preliminary hearing that the law does not consider conversations that can be overheard confidential and that covert recording is allowed when done to investigate violent crimes.

On Thursday, the court saw video clips of the StemExpress CEO, identified as Doe 12, meeting in May 2015 with Daleiden and Merritt, who were posing as owners of a biotech company. Doe 12 says in the video there’s a great demand for “raw fetal tissue,” and that the “insanely fragile” neural or brain tissue is best shipped in a “whole calvarium,” or head, whereupon Daleiden says, “Just make sure the eyes are closed.”

“Yeah,” laughs Doe 12, “Tell the lab techs its coming…it’s almost like they don’t want to know what it is.”

Doe 12 was far less forthcoming in her testimony Thursday, as Breen noted. “One thing we’ve observed throughout these proceedings is that these witnesses were much more candid when they spoke to David and Susan on the undercover video than they are on the stand,” he told LifeSiteNews.

“However, we have been able to establish certain facts that are important through their testimony, and when they deviate from the video, we’ve been able to use the video to show that they’re not telling the truth on the stand,” Breen said. “That’s important to show that the attorney general is using witnesses who are willing to stretch the truth, and our side is exposing that truth.”

Breen told the court that StemExpress was mentioned in connection with Stanford University studies where Langendorff perfusion was used, a technique that “requires a beating heart.”

“Does StemExpress supply fetal hearts to Stanford?” he asked Doe 12. She hesitated to answer because, she said, “there’s so much targeting of researchers.” However, Judge Christopher Hite told her the question was relevant.

“Yes, we have provided heart tissue to Stanford,” Doe 12 said. She also admitted that CMP photos are accurate and that sometimes a baby’s intact calvarium is attached to the baby’s body and sometimes it is not.

In another key exchange, Doe 12 testified that her company requests that parties sign a nondisclosure agreement or NDA before discussing business. But while Doe 12 met with Daleiden and Merritt in late May, the NDA for the meeting was signed in late June, according to an email from StemExpress to CMP that Breen produced in court.

Nor was Doe 12 able to produce evidence the NDA had been sent to Daleiden and Merritt before the meeting. “After talking about how important a NDA is, the only evidence in the record is that the NDA was not sent out until a month after this supposedly highly confidential meeting,” Breen told LifeSiteNews. “So that was a really significant point. That’s why there was so much argument on it,” he said.

“At the same time, the statute is clear: if there is a reasonable expectation that the conversation can be overhead, then it doesn’t count as a confidential conversation,” he said. “So our contention is, if you’re sitting there at a restaurant with wait staff around you and coming and going as they please, you can be overheard, that’s a clear exception to the statute.”

Breen also quizzed Doe 12 about the Planned Parenthood consent form that StemExpress used in 2015. Former StemExpress technician Holly O’Donnell supplied the PP consent form to CMP. She also is featured in two CMP videos describing in graphic detail the process of sorting through dismembered arms and legs of aborted babies.

The form states there will be no changes to the abortion procedure because of the decision to donate blood or fetal tissue. When Doe 12 said she couldn’t recall what the form said, Breen played for the court “a portion of the video tape where she bragged about memorizing the [PP consent] form down to the control numbers,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Doe 12 also told the court she couldn’t recall what the current StemExpress consent form stipulates. “She wouldn’t admit that patients are not told their abortion procedures could be changed, but we know it to be true,” Breen told LifeSiteNews. “So we’re using the videos to be able to show these people are not being straight with the court,” he said. “And so you shouldn’t believe them with anything they’re saying.”

In an age of increased hostility, should Christians simply defend ‘viewpoint neutrality’, or must they do more?

Last night, Ross Douthat told a packed hall at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. that the heated disagreement which emerged this past summer between Sohrab Ahmari and David French looks to The New York Times reader like a mere squabble “between radically Christian conservatives.” But Douthat cautioned that in an age of secularism which is increasingly hostile to both conservativism and Christianity itself, the arguments between Christian conservatives matters for everyone.

On a surface level, the dispute is occasioned by the election of Donald Trump, and whether Christians must or must not support him. Several times, David French highlighted this aspect of the dispute, stating in so many words that Christians who support Donald Trump have “compromised Christian witness” in the public square. “Don’t wreck your moral public witness for Trump,” French counseled Ahmari. But Ahmari repeatedly refused this way of framing the debate, highlighting that Christians should not sit idly by while neighbors use cultural and legal power to force Christians to accept false and immoral sexual standards.

A deeper level of the dispute was clarified, however, around French and Ahmari’s discussion of “Drag Queen Story Hour” which uses public library resources to teach transgressive and disordered accounts of gender and human sexuality to children. Ahmari wants conservatives to use the administrative power of the state to enforce obscenity laws, and defend a substantive vision of the good. Conservatives should not be afraid to advance a politically serious vision of what is good for all people, and they shouldn’t be afraid to use cultural, political, and legal means to do so. But French repeatedly refused this idea as “stupid” because it undermines “viewpoint neutral access to public facilities” which he considers absolutely bedrock to the nation. “Viewpoint neutrality is what we must defend,” French insisted. “I want drag queens to come into a relation with Jesus Christ, but I am not going to usurp the Constitution to do this. The price of wiping out Drag Queen Story Hour is too high.”

It’s an odd thing to hear a Christian conservative insist that drag queens teaching your kids about twerking in libraries is just the kind of freedom that the American Constitution protects. But French believes it. Near the end of the debate, French said again that Ahmari’s vision is a threat to the “viewpoint neutrality” which is so central to the Constitution. French said that “churches depend on that for their defense. All we have is the First Amendment and God’s help to soften hearts. Viewpoint neutrality is bedrock.” In other words, French believes that Ahmari is undermining the very thing which a lawyer like French would use to protect Christians in the courts.

French was eloquent on the need to love one’s enemies. At times he touted his ability to use legal procedures to carve out conscience protections, and praised the First Amendment for granting Christians “co-equal space” in the public square. But at other times, French seemed ambivalent about whether Christians even need this space, or much of it. “Christians don’t need co-equal space. Christianity spread without any space. I don’t need co-equal space, and I certainly don’t need better than co-equal,” French said, implicitly criticizing what he sees as Ahmari’s desire to reorder the public square in a way which privileges Christianity.

Ahmari was eloquent, too, on recognizing the disconnect between the American founders — and the religious assumptions they shared with the American people — and the use to which their thought is now put in defense of sexual degeneracy, often putting Christian views at a legal disadvantage. Ross Douthat intervened to see a point of commonality here: French and Ahmari could both agree that the founders never envisioned that the First Amendment would protect porn. But where Ahmari thinks this gives us every reason to advance things like bans on porn, French thinks there is simply too much “market demand” for “the product.”

French’s view often returned to the power of 18th century political principles as our best tools for dealing with the sins of an imperfect nation. Wherever Ahmari wanted Americans to think about how to curb things which are morally false or evil, French wanted to invoke “viewpoint neutrality” and remind everyone that “no country is perfect.” We are a nation of sinners. But the problem is that this reduces every political discussion to a kind of moral indifferentism that is only ever resolvable in the private sphere when, as Ahmari noted, Christianity is an emphatically “public religion.”

There’s no such thing as a view from nowhere, and there is no such thing as moral neutrality. French’s consistent concern with “viewpoint neutrality” in the debate frequently met Ahmari’s observation that the secular liberal, hostile to Christianity, is not at all satisfied with “viewpoint neutrality.” Secular liberals are working with great efficiency — marching through the institutions — to ensure that their viewpoint is not neutral but normative for all. They are not satisfied with carve-outs for special rights under a protected class. The secular liberal wants things which are morally wrong, and objectively contrary to nature, to be deemed perfectly good, and even praiseworthy. And they successfully use the coercive force of law to do so. This is not “viewpoint neutrality.” When 4% of the population can force the history of the LGBT movement to be taught in public schools as the moral equivalent of the civil rights movement, that is not “viewpoint neutrality.” Obergefell was not an effort to “persuade” fellow Americans with reasonable arguments.

Ahmari is right. Defending Drag Queen Story Hour as “freedom of viewpoint” is a kind of moral indifferentism that doesn’t really redound to Christian witness either. French is right that Christians ought to be in the business of “loving our enemies,” praying for the conversion of our neighbors, and defending their intrinsic dignity as bearers of God’s image. I want David French in the courtroom defending Christians. But I think that Ahmari has the more fundamental truth on his side. Namely, that we cannot afford to settle for procedural freedom, but we must advance a substantive vision of the good. Christians might suffer either way. It has sometimes been our lot in God’s good providence. But if Christians are to suffer, it shouldn’t be for “viewpoint neutrality.” It should not be because we failed to stand for what is right and just for all men, but because we did.

Ephesians 3:8 This favor was given to me– the least of all the devotees – to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ,

Ephesians 3:9 and to shed light for all about the commission of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

incalculable riches of Christ

There is a thrill that comes from exposing the truth of scripture to a life in darkness and desperate need. It is like bringing a gift which will rescue a family from a life of debt and fruitless labor. Paul is in prison, paying the price for this joy. Yet he still speaks of sharing the gospel as the incalculable riches of Christ – a favor that he has received.

Lord, thank you for enriching us with the incalculable riches of Christ. Show us how to share the wealth.

[The Prime Minister explains how and why she acted and reacted to the allegations of sexual abuse from within her office.]

I am every bit as angry as you are.

I am every bit as disappointed as you must be.

The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I am running out of patience with them, and the way they continually let us down, while helpless people like you and me stand by and can only watch failure after failure.

I can assure you, earnestly, that the moment I found out about the fact that you had found out about the facts, I acted immediately to see what the situation was. I would never sit on my hands if it ever became apparent to me that something had become apparent to you, and that’s my promise.

I was immensely disappointed to learn that our party president, Nigel Haworth, had conducted himself this way. Again.

If I had foreseen that he could do something like this (again), then I would never have let him get away with it in the first place again.

Some of you are still not satisfied with the extent of my involvement in this, and that’s okay (legally).

But it was only on Monday that I learned that you had learned that Paula Bennett had learned that others had learned, and the moment I heard that others had heard, and that Grant had heard, and that Mike had heard and Rob had heard, then I acted swiftly to wait for Nigel to resign.

I was fixing myself a coffee on Monday night and Clarke said to me “What’s all this about? Didn’t you know about this five weeks ago?”

And I said “I didn’t know the extent of it! I thought it was just bullying!”

I never promised that our party would be free of bullying. Government is about compromise, and we are in a coalition with New Zealand First.

I know that many of you are sceptical of us now, in large part because this has happened not once, but twice. But if you can find it in yourself to put your trust in me once again, then I promise you there will not be a fourth time.

Ephesians 3:5 This was not made known to humans in other generations as it is now revealed to his devoted missionaries and prophets by the Breath:

Ephesians 3:6 The Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Ephesians 3:7 I was made a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s favor that was given to me by the achieving energy of his power.

equal in Christ

The gospel – breathed out by the Sacred Breath of God – is a message from God that all people regardless of ethnic origin now have access to God equally. When this truth was revealed to Paul, it dramatically changed his life. It is the reason he is now a prisoner. But in spite of where he is, his proclamation of the gospel must go on. If he cannot go to Ephesus, he needs to send this epistle there. He message is unity and freedom and equal partnership in the promise.

Lord, thank you for the message of your gospel, setting us free and making us equal in Christ.

Here is a perfect story of modern Britain. A judge has been publicly reprimanded by a Tory Cabinet Minister for advising a criminal to lose weight and get a job.

I do not know if the allegedly overweight offender took the well-meant advice, but I somehow doubt it. Having spotted the way power and morals are going in modern Britain, he made a formal complaint that the judge had used ‘abusive language’ – and it succeeded. I wonder if he is now also entitled to compensation?

The judge, Recorder Julian Malins QC, flatly refused to agree that he had done anything wrong. Partly because he stood up for himself in this way, he was given a formal warning by the then Justice Minister and Lord Chancellor, David Gauke. Mr Gauke has since left this post but is, I believe, still a member of the ‘Conservative’ Party.

The official public notice from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO), highly damaging to a judge’s career, says that, in reaching their decision, Mr Gauke and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett, ‘took into consideration that the Recorder failed to acknowledge the inappropriateness of his conduct’.

The JCIO posted the reprimand on its website, but refuses to discuss the matter. I asked Mr Gauke to comment, asking him what was conservative about his action, and in what way he differed from the most politically correct wing of the Labour Party, but he has so far chosen not to do so. I do not know the identity of the criminal.

Mr Malins, 69, an experienced barrister, tells me he still has no regrets. He says the defendant involved, who is now in his 50s, had appeared in court 40 times in 35 years, had accumulated 60 convictions and served several prison terms, including a lengthy sentence for GBH with intent. But on the day he came before Mr Malins, it was for a lesser matter and he was told he could go free. At that point the man interrupted proceedings to say a weight ‘had been lifted from my shoulders’.

Mr Malins replied: ‘You had better not worry about the weight off your shoulders, but should rather worry about the weight on your body.’ The defendant then asked the judge to repeat himself, which he did.

Mr Malins, who tells me he is just over 5ft 10in and weighs just over 12½ stone, says the man was so fat he had to be helped into the dock. He responded to the complaint by politely telling the defendant in detail that he needed to lose weight and get a job. He explained this was for his own sake and the good of society.

As for the claim of abusive language, Mr Malins says: ‘I reject that suggestion absolutely. On the contrary, the advice which I gave him was sincere, well meant, and, I believe, very good.’

At first glance, the thing is just ridiculous. You think that at some point you will wake up in the midst of this nonsense, and grown-ups will return, from wherever they have been hiding, to restore the country to sanity. But they don’t. The one thing you can be sure of in this country now is that the state, where it possibly can be, will be against common sense.

But it is deeper than that. We now have a state which, when asked to choose between a learned judge and a frequently convicted criminal, sides with the criminal as if they are on an equal footing. There is no moral force and bite in our cardboard criminal justice system.

It sees its job as to negotiate, neutrally, between ‘society’ and ‘offenders’ whose misdeeds are not really their fault, but are explained by poverty, abuse or some other fashionable misfortune. And it reserves special spite for anyone who tries to behave as if things were still as they used to be. The householder who defends himself against a burglar is more severely investigated than most burglaries. This is because his action threatens the monopoly of soft justice.

You are alone. If dangerous evil comes your way, do not expect our current establishment to take your side and defend you. If you dare to defend yourself, it will quite possibly be you who ends up in the dock.

As for the ‘Conservative’ Party, can someone remind me, what is it for?

Ephesians 3:1 For this, I, Paul have become the prisoner of Christ Jesus in behalf of you Gentiles.

Ephesians 3:2 You have heard, haven’t you, about the commission of God’s favor that he gave to me for you?

Ephesians 3:3 The mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have briefly written above.

Ephesians 3:4 By reading this you are able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

prisoner for the revelation

Paul connects his current state of imprisonment with his commission as an ambassador of Christ. He thus calls himself a prisoner of Christ, even though it is a human authority that imprisoned him. He was where he was because of his commitment to Christ, and insisting on sharing the gospel with a world that did not want to hear it.

He also connects his commission with the revelation of a mystery. Because his insight was so great, his suffering was also great. We should not think as the world thinks – that if only we knew more, we would suffer less. God’s economy does not work that way. Our suffering is a badge of authenticy certifying the truth of the gospel we preach.

Lord, give us the strength to endure what is necessary to pass on the truth to our generation.

In my last post, I expounded the Psychopath objection to divine command meta-ethics (DCM) that has recently been defended by Erik Wielenberg. To recap. Wielenberg suggests that my response to his earlier “reasonable unbeliever’s objection” relies on the following principle:

R) God commands person S to do act A only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force.

Wielenberg’ summarises his argument as follows:

The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory

[1] There are some psychopaths who are incapable of grasping the authority and force of moral demands. (empirical premise)

[2] So, there are some psychopaths to whom God has issued no divine commands. (from 1 and R) .

[3] So, if DCT is true, then there are some psychopaths who have no moral obligations. (from 2 and DCT).

[4] But there are no psychopaths who have no moral obligations.

[5.] Therefore, DCT is false. (from 3 and 4)

I think this argument is unsound. However, before I can elaborate as to why I believe this, a couple of ambiguities in the argument need to be addressed.

Let’s look first at R.

R) God commands a person S to do act A only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force.

As this is worded R lays condition, under which commands can exist. It entails that if someone does not recognise God’s commandments as authoritative or having imperative force, then God has not issued a command. It is unclear, however, that the counterexamples I offered suggest something this strong. Consider, in particular, the context of my replies. Morrison’s had stated: “Even if he is aware of a “sign” that he somehow manages to interpret as a “command” not to steal, how can he [a reasonable non-believer] be subject to that command if he doesn’t know who issued it, or that it was issued by a competent authority?” (Morriston (2009), 5)

The situation Morriston envisaged is one where someone is aware of the existence of the command but is unaware of its source. What is being contested is not the existence of the command but whether unbelievers are “subject to it”. Morriston elaborates what he means by “subject to it” it later in the same paragraph. “[I[f the note is unsigned, the handwriting is unfamiliar, and you have no idea who the author might be, then it is as clear as day that you have no such obligation.” He adds “even if our reasonable non-believer gets as far as to interpret one of Adams’s “signs” as conveying the message, “Do not steal,” he will be under no obligation to comply with this instruction unless and until he discovers the divine source of the message.”

Consequently, Morriston is not envisaging a situation where no one issues the command. He is instead suggesting that a command has been issued but that it fails to impose an obligation upon the hearer. It was in response to this argument that I offered my counterexamples. Consequently, these replies were not trying to provide situations under which a command exists. They were suggesting conditions under which an existing command can generate an obligation.

Something similar is true of the other counterexamples consider Evan’s example of the person hiking on the Iran/Iraq Border. Before offering this example, Evan’s describes the argument he is responding to as follows;

Wielenberg admits that if God exists he would be authorised to impose obligations on human beings… However, the problem is that for this to happen, the recipients of the command must know that the commands come from God, otherwise no obligation is generated.

Evan’s takes himself to be addressing the situation under which God’s commands impose obligations. Not circumstances under which commands exist.

Consequently, as R is worded, it is far too strong. Wielenberg appears to be aware of this point. Early in the discussion, he states:

Is shall henceforth use command to mean obligation-bestowing command. On this usage, no divine command is issued unless it imposes some moral obligation on those to whom it is issued. It is important to see that this usage may differ somewhat from the ordinary sense of command (Wielenberg (2018), 2)

If this is correct, then R should be understood as follows:

R1) If God commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes an obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force.

To avoid potential unclarity, I will use R1 instead of R throughout the rest of the discussion.

This brings us to a second and more crucial ambiguity. R1 refers to an “obligation-bestowing” command. However, the word “obligation” admits of different senses. Historically medieval theologians distinguished between a material and formal sense of obligation. More recent literature has used the words “objective” and “subjective” instead to describe this distinction. Smith explains: “Objective obligatoriness (or rightness or wrongness) is the deontic status that an action has in virtue of its actual circumstances and consequences” By contrast, “Subjective obligatoriness (or rightness or wrongness) is the deontic status an action has in virtue of the agent’s beliefs about its morally relevant circumstances and consequences” (Smith (2010), 4)

As an illustration, consider the case of David Cerven, an unarmed man who was shot dead by the New Zealand police in March of 2015. After committing several of armed robberies, Cerven had arranged with the police to meet at a public park where he would turn himself in. When the police arrived, he informed them he was armed and reached into his jacket pulling out what looked like a gun. CCTV footage showed Cerven “putting his right hand into his right-hand pocket, taking his hand out of the pocket and then appearing to clasp both hands together as if to make it look like he had a firearm in his hands”. Cerven was shot and killed. Subsequent investigation revealed Cerven was unarmed. (New Zealand Herald, 2018)

In Smith’s terminology, the shooting of Cerven was objectively wrong. If we look at the actual circumstances and consequences, the police were shooting dead an unarmed man, who was not threatening either them or the public. To kill an unarmed man is morally wrong, and police officers have an obligation not to shoot unarmed people. At the same time, the shooting of Cerven was subjectively permissible. Given what the police knew; that Cerven had stated he was armed, was reaching for what looked like a gun, and the speed in which they had to make a decision, their decision to fire was permissible.

Donagan (1977) points out that objective and subjective obligations play different roles in moral thinking. “When an agent and his moral counsellors are considering the moral permissibility of a proposed action, the first question to arise is, Is it materially (objectively) permissible?”. The agent is to attempt to discern his objective duties as accurately possible and to perform them. By contrast, subjective obligations are utilised when a person has acted on what they believe to be their objective obligations, and we are raising questions about culpability and blameworthiness. If the agent act with non-culpable ignorance, even if the act is objectively wrong, he is excused and not subject to blame for performing it. Whereas he does wrong knowingly and intentionally, he is blameworthy. (Donagan (1977), 137)

There are important connections between objective and subjective senses of the word obligations and significant discussion and debate about how to formulate them and their relationship to each other. These details do not concern us here. What is pertinent is that the distinction between objective and subjective obligations provides us with two possible interpretations of R :

(R1. Subjective) If God’s commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes a subjective obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force.

(R1. Objective) If God’s commands a person S to do act A, this command imposes an objective obligation on S to do A, only if S is capable of recognising the requirement to do A as being extremely authoritative and as having imperative force.

The same ambiguity effects premise [4] as well. [4] could mean either:

[4S] But there are no psychopaths who have no subjective moral obligations.

Or

[4O] But there are no psychopaths who have no objective moral obligations.

Having clarified some ambiguities in the Psychopathy argument. We can no turn to offering a response. I is my contention that the common distinction between objective and subjective obligation makes trouble for the Psychopath Objection. In my next post, I will explain why this ambiguity makes Wielenberg’s objection unsound.

God places a very high value on all human life. Everyone is created fearfully and wonderfully in the image of God with intrinsic value. That doesn’t start at the first breath, it starts when we enter our mother’s womb.

If we’re going to say we’re for all people and we love all people, but we don’t value human life in the womb, that’s being a hypocrite. You’re hypocritical if you don’t stand up for all life. So that’s why I’m speaking out. [Washington Examiner]

Ephesians 2:21 every building, being fit together1 to him, increases into a temple devoted to the Lord.

Ephesians 2:22 You are also being built together in him for God’s dwelling in the Breath.

being fit together

Even though Ephesus was a Gentile city, Paul’s readers could understand his allusion to the temple courts in Israel. But Paul uses a term here in verse 21 that paints a word picture of God putting on the temple courts like a uniform. Later, he uses the same word to describe how the ligaments in the body hold the bones together.2 When God gave the Israelites instructions on how to build the tabernacle – then the temple – he insisted that they follow the pattern because the temple below represented a reality above.

We are being fit together like a uniform for God to wear, so that he can do the work he wants to do down here. We will not all have the same work, but God can use us all.

Lord, remove from us anything that hinders you from doing your great work through us.